Water company apologises for delays in repairing collapsed sewer pipe on Buxton road

Severn Trent, in a statement, said they have been working on a collapsed sewer pipe on Dukes Drive for a while now due to the complexity of the repair.

Waste Manager from Severn Trent, Zelia Lockett said: " We understand that local people are starting to get a little frustrated with us having Dukes Drive closed for so ong and so we wanted to first of all, say sorry.

"And second, to let everyone know what's happening. We are doing everything that we can to get this fixed as soon as possible, but it's proving to be a very tricky job."

She said the nature of the repair is "very complex" and the fact that it's on the side of a hill makes it even more difficult.

"We also have the fact that this is in a tree conservation area, and there is a live badger sett in the location.

"We take care of our environment very seriously and so we need to work alongside other agencies, landowners and ecologists to make sure we can do the repair with no impact on the badgers and limit any environment impact.

"We're also finding it very difficult to actually get access to the site."

She however assured the public that the operations will continue until everything returns to normal.

“That said, we make no excuses, and we will absolutely keep going on this work until everything is done and back to normal.

“In the meantime, we are currently using pumps to bypass the damaged section of sewer pipe to take away the waste that continues to come down the pipe, to make sure everyone can continue to use their taps and toilets as per usual, and that unfortunately means that we need to keep Dukes Drive closed.

“We’d like to say sorry once again, and we’ll keep everyone updated once we know more,” she said.